We Meet in the Middle
by Citizenjess
Summary: Wanda intends to get her revenge on Magneto, no matter what it entails, even if it means hurting the person closest to her in the world.


So I think I was really bothered by the fact that the big fix-it for Wanda's mental ~issues~ in "Evolution" involved taking out the bad memories and replacing them with fake, good ones. (Seriously, I have an entirely different story on the back burner involving Charles balking at Magneto for letting Mastermind do it in the first place.) In a series that leaves several other things just kind of messy and real, this felt a little, well, disingenuous. So I fixed it, or something.

Summary: Wanda intends to get her revenge on Magneto, no matter what it entails, even if it means hurting the person closest to her in the world. Set after the season three episode, "The Stuff of Villains," and, I guess, meant to take the place of "The Toad, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." In addition, this is something of an homage to valoofle's story, "Monsters Don't Cry," from which a similar concept (Wanda taking out her anger on Pietro) springs; you can read it on this site. Title comes from (wince) Justin Bieber's "Down to Earth." Rated T for light descriptions of violence.

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><p><strong>We Meet in the Middle On Our Way Back Down To Earth<strong>

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><p>When he comes to, he can feel his head throbbing, and decides that he's been hit with something dense. Blinking, he can tell that he's in a warehouse or abandoned building of some sort; in truth, it's not that much worse than the Brotherhood house, and he can't help but grin a bit at the thought.<p>

Unfortunately, his captor does not seem to appreciate the levity. "Keep smirking, Pietro," a sharp voice tells him, and suddenly, things start falling into place.

"Wanda?"

His sister smirks at him. "I made sure to tie your legs extra tight. Don't want you to run away before I get what I want." On cue, she watches him unsuccessfully test the give on the ropes keeping him fastened to a chair. "I told you this wasn't over, little brother."

Pietro continues to struggle. "Come on, Wanda. I really don't know where he is. He doesn't tell me that kind of thing. He just contacts me when he needs me, and ..."

"How?"

"Huh?" Pietro blinks, and gulps when Wanda stalks closer suddenly. She brandishes an object suddenly, pulled from her pocket, and Pietro gapes at it fearfully. "Wanda, why do you need a knife? Put it down, okay? Y-you ... you could really hurt somebody."

Wanda outright laughs at this. "I really could," she tells him, and suddenly the weapon is much closer to his neck than he's comfortable with. He resists the urge to squirm, knowing that it will just make things worse. "I could hurt our dear father with it," he hears Wanda snarl, and looks down. "Or," Wanda continues, and suddenly, the blade is just barely touching the quivering skin of his throat, "I could kill you. Unless, of course, you tell me what I want to know."

Pietro whimpers. "I don't know how to do that, Wanda." He gazes up at her fearfully, trying another tactic. "Please," he gasps, when he feels the knife nick his cheek. "Please, Wanda. I just ... I know he's done terrible things to you. I know you'll never forget the pain of that, the anger. But ... you're my sister. You're my twin sister, and I love you ..."

"Bullshit," Wanda retorts swiftly. She leans in then, and her face is pale and angry, her eyes flashing, and Pietro watches her unhappily, shaking a little. "Like you ever cared. Like you even thought about me the entire time I was away. Like you would have even bothered to come and get me until Mystique broke me out."

Pietro shakes his head as much as he's able to without digging the knife blade into his skin. "I cared," he says piteously, and Wanda sneers. "I did," he protests. "I didn't want him to leave you there. I c-couldn't stop him, Wanda ... and I didn't know how to h-help you ..."

"Well, it's too late for that now, isn't it, Pietro?" She places the knife flush against his throat, and Pietro's heart flutters in fear. He shuts his eyes, a tear slipping down his cheek. "I'll give you one last chance, and then you die: Where is Magneto?"

"He calls me sometimes," Pietro finally manages, his face flushed with shame. Wanda lowers the knife a miniscule amount, and he takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "In my pocket," Pietro tells her shakily. "The phone he gave me is in my pocket."

Wanda fetches it, flipping it open, and quickly locates what can only be Magneto's personal contact information. "You have him saved in your phone as 'Dad'?" Wanda scoffs, and then presses a button, and holds the small piece up to Pietro's ear. "Make him come to you," she hisses, and the phone begins to ring. "Do it, Pietro."

"Hello? Pietro?" The voice that answers after only a couple of rings is smooth and even, and Pietro's stomach twists. He watches Wanda's furious face, and then licks his lips and speaks in a quiet, shaky tone into the receiver:

"I - I think I'm in trouble."

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><p>It doesn't take long for Magneto to find them; whether he has the ability to trace Pietro's cell phone, or some other means of locating his children that comes with being the Master of Magnetism, it only matters that he arrives quickly, in full supervillain garb, floating in the air. His feet touch the ground, and Wanda glowers at him. "Hello, Father," she spits at him, and Magneto frowns.<p>

"Good evening, Wanda." He gestures towards Pietro. "I see you have a hostage. Would you mind telling me what you hope to accomplish by abducting your brother?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Wanda bites back quickly. "I knew you'd come for him in the blink of an eye. I knew you always cared for my baby brother more than me; you'd do anything for him, and he's become your little stool pigeon. And as I expected, as soon as you found out poor little Pietro was in danger, you came running."

Magneto's face is impassive. "Wanda, you must know that I love you very much, as much as I do Pietro," he begins. This is not the correct angle apparently, however, because Wanda jumps into action, thrusting the still-present knife at Pietro's chest, her face furious.

"Liar!" she screams, and the walls shake a little. She breathes deeply, and Magneto sighs a little in relief when the building's infrastructure seems to stabilize. "Just save me from your smooth-talking," she tells him, and he crosses his arms over his chest, mouth drawn into a frown. "If you had ever loved me even one iota, you wouldn't have left me in that hell-hole. You wouldn't have abandoned me."

"There was no other option, Wanda." Magneto's voice is calm, as though he's rehearsed these words many times over. "You were too dangerous. You couldn't be controlled. Even Professor Xavier said so ..."

"Don't even bring him into this."

"All right, I won't." He holds up his hands in supplication. "If your anger is aimed at me, though, why are you taking it out on Pietro?"

Wanda's eyes remain narrowed. "Because it would really hurt you if he were gone. That's good enough for me."

"It would pain me for either of you to get hurt." Briefly, Magneto glances at Pietro, who looks away. Steeling himself, he speaks again, this time, in a soft, low tone, so unlike the booming voice that earns him so many followers. "When we left you at that place, Pietro cried all the way home, and every night after that. Not a day went by that he didn't ask me when you could return, why we had to leave you in the first place. You have never not been the most important fixture in his life.

"I care about you more than anything too, of course," he continues, and Wanda appears to be listening, though her eyes remain full of fury and hurt. Behind her, Pietro is crying, now, tears tracking silently down wan cheeks, his head bowed. "However, I understand that you need to take your anger out on something," Magneto intones. "So I am asking this of you, Wanda: That you do not use Pietro to get to me. Let your brother live; he is only doing as he's been asked. He is innocent in this."

Wanda's lips purse. "Fine," she says after a long moment; then she brandishes the knife anew. "So I'll just kill you, then."

Magneto remains standing in front of her. It's easy enough for him to deflect the hand-held weapon with the metal blade, but his hands stay at his sides, as though challenging Wanda to go through with her grand revenge scheme. "Goodbye, father," Wanda whispers, and time seems to stand still ... and then everything shifts back into its usual momentum. Wanda still seems perfectly willing and able to send the knife flying, enhanced with her powers, through her father's flesh, and Magneto remains resolutely stoic in the path of harm's way. It's only when they hear a small, quiet voice that everything shifts once more.

"Wanda, please ... don't."

"Stay out of this, Pietro," Wanda hisses, snarling. "This is between me and our dear father."

"But it's not," Pietro interjects anew, and Wanda whips around to stare at him. Though still vulnerable and helpless, Pietro looks back at her with some measure of inner strength, and speaks again: "I know you think he did what he did to hurt you, Wanda," he says softly, "but it killed him, too. He would go and sit in your room at night and just stare at everything and not talk for hours. When it was our birthday, it might as well have been the memorial service for a funeral in our house.

"Look, he hasn't been a perfect dad to me either," Pietro says, and Magneto remains silent, taking everything in. "I didn't even like the Maximoffs that much," the boy says ruefully, and his lips quirk upwards. "Mrs. M. smelled weird, and they had weird rules. I was really angry for a long time, too. Like you, I felt abandoned. But ... we're all here now, you know? We have the opportunity to try again, Wanda, and I want to, because I love you, and I've missed you so much." At this, Pietro begins crying again. "Please don't kill him, Wanda," he begs. "He's not the best father in the world, but he's the only one we've got. Can't we just be a family again? All of us? Please?"

The hand holding the knife shakes. Wanda makes no move to attack her father, now, her gaze still trained on Pietro. "I missed you, too," she whispers brokenly. She turns slowly as Magneto approaches, lets him extract the knife from her hands carefully, not using his mutation, but simply clutching it gently with his fingers, and then floating it carefully away. "Is it true?" Wanda asks him, both still hovering on one another's periphery. "Do you still ... love me?"

"I never stopped," Magneto tells her honestly. He reaches out to grasp her shoulders, and Wanda launches herself into an embrace, her face pressed against his breast plate. "My children," Magneto murmurs, rubbing Wanda's back as she sobs and clutches at him, her thin frame shaking with emotion. "I have made so many mistakes," he continues. "I never realized how precious a gift you were until I risked losing you both." Wanda looks up at him then, and he smiles and wipes tears from beneath her eyes. "However, if you'll let me, I will try to make up for that, every day, for the rest of my life," he promises, and Wanda nods.

Eventually, she moves to untie Pietro, using the knife, proffered a bit reluctantly by Magneto, to cut through the ropes keeping him bound to the chair. He stands shakily and stretches, and then Wanda barrels into him, and he wraps his arms around her in a full hug. "I'm sorry," she cries softly, and Pietro nods, squeezing her tightly.

"I know. It's okay. We'll get through this, Wanda, together. I love you."

"I love you, too." She moves away, and Pietro moves vaguely towards his father, looking up at him hesitantly. Then, surprised, he hears Magneto murmur, "Pietro," and curls into his proffered embrace. "My son," Magneto says, his hand smoothing over Pietro's soft, light-colored hair. The boy looks up at him wonderingly, and the older man smiles. "I am so proud of you," he promises, and Pietro grins. "Let's leave this place," the Master of Magnetism suggests. He watches the siblings look at one another for approval; when Wanda nods slowly, Pietro follows suit, and then they're off, ready to try again, knowing that whatever challenges may arise, they will be able to face them together now, as a family.


End file.
